1. Field of Invention
The present invention relates to shelving systems and equipment storage management and more particularly to a structurally integrated building-block shelf frame system for storing electronic and non-electronic equipment that can be mechanically interconnected with minimal labor content to assemble the resultant structure without the requirement of equipment rack cabinets.
2. Discussion of the Prior Art
Datacenters are designed and constructed to optimize power and cooling requirements for a plurality of electric components such as power supplies, memory units, network appliances and servers. Since their introduction into datacenters, most of these electric devices have been adapted to fit into rack mountable appliance chassis. Rack mountable electric appliance chassis are typically constructed of steel sheet metal which adds considerable weight and mass to the overall electric component. In datacenters, the steel appliance chassis housing the electric components are then mounted into standardized equipment racks.
In general, equipment racks are produced in standard sizes such as “full height” that are approximately six feet in height, or “half high” racks that are approximately three feet in height. The equipment racks are designed to receive electronic appliances of variable height based upon a standardized scale referred to as the “Rack Unit”, “RU” or “U”, a unit of measure equal to 1.75 inches (44.45 mm). Thus, a standard full height 42 U equipment rack could store forty-two 1 U, or twenty-one 2U electronic component appliance chassis. The 19″ rack mounting fixture includes two parallel metal strips (referred to as “posts” or “panel mounts”) standing vertically. The posts are 0.625 inches (15.88 mm) wide, and separated by a distance of 17.75 inches (450.85 mm) for the mounting of the electronic equipment chassis, thus giving an overall rack width of 19 inches (482.6 mm) and effectively limiting the maximum width of equipment to 17.75″ (450.85 mm) with a minimum height of 1 U or 1.75 inches (44.45 mm).
Known initially as “relay racks,” equipment racks were adapted by the telecommunications and computer industry from 19 inch signaling equipment racks standardized originally by the railroad industry in the early 20th century. Equipment racks initially included two posts and were, therefore, commonly known as “two-post racks.” To accommodate larger electronic components, two sets of racks were implemented to support the front and back of larger electronic equipment and were known as “four-post racks.” Ultimately, four-post equipment racks were integrated into steel cabinets that have a standardized 24″ (610 mm) wide footprint, and are typically 800 mm or 1000 mm in depth. The industry standard four-post racks commonly found in datacenters today are enclosed in a steel cabinet, and positioned in rows on 24-inch centers. A difficulty of such a cabinet system is that the cabinet is typically shipped in assembled form with a significant cost of shipping at a fixed standard height to fit through the average door. This legacy equipment rack design effectively limits horizontal and vertical space utilization in the datacenter. It requires each 17.75 inch wide stack of equipment appliance chassis to occupy 24 inches of horizontal floor space, and limits vertical space utilization to the height of the equipment rack installed, not the ceiling height, or cooling capabilities of the datacenter.
Many other difficulties also exist between the independent design requirements of equipment chassis and rack cabinet architectures. Although the typical steel box construction of each rack mountable equipment chassis is very rigid and crush resistant, once mounted into the equipment rack, the mass of the chassis becomes surplus weight that must be supported by the equipment rack. The steel electronic component chassis is not intended to add any additional structural integrity to the equipment rack. Inversely, due to the unknown variable mass of rack-mountable electronic equipment that may be installed into an equipment rack, equipment rack cabinets are engineered to be structurally independent monolithic structures capable of withstanding a maximum potential payload at a fixed height. These independent design approaches further cause excessive material use and unnecessarily add to overall structural mass further impacting datacenter efficiency and utilization.
Though much has changed in computing and telecommunications equipment over the past decades, there has been relatively little change in equipment rack design to better address the densities and efficiencies of modern electronic components and how they are utilized. This not only affects the size, but also the total mass of existing rack cabinet systems, significantly impacting material usage and floor space utilization. As datacenters adopt virtualization and cloud computing to achieve higher levels of efficiencies utilizing large arrays of homogeneous power-efficient equipment, the current art of rack and chassis-based electronic equipment significantly limits more efficient datacenter designs as well as the utilization of existing facilities.